[OSGeo-Discuss] Proposal: OSGeo Cartographic Library

[Ari Jolma]

Brent Fraser kirjoitti:
> Bruno,
>
>   Have a go with my favorite Canadian topographic map
> (NTS:082H04, "Waterton Lakes" ):
>
> Shapefiles:
> http://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/canvec/50k_shp/082/h/canvec_082h04_shp.zip
>   

Thanks for the pointer, that's a nice dataset. Opening these 39 layers 
makes me ask why there's no style information? Pardon my ignorance on 
digital cartography, but is it because of standards or something else? 
How do Arc* tools do it?

I think that's one crucial point in this thread. We all do have our 
favorite software and want-to-have-software for creating a map or 
geovisualization from this. Maybe a common goal would be to write a 
specification how to create a map from this data -- note that there is 
an infinite number of maps that one could create. I'd like to have a 
file or files associated with datasets like this, that I'd just open in 
my favorite software and it'd show me a map and not data.

The second thing would be to have a free OSGeo map symbol set, which the 
map description file would refer to and the software use when creating 
the map.

Do I make any sense?

Cheers,

Ari

-- 
Prof. Ari Jolma
Geoinformatiikka / Geoinformatics
Teknillinen Korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
tel: +358 9 451 3886 address: POBox 1200, 02015 TKK, Finland
Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi URL: http://www.tkk.fi/~jolma